1. Field
This invention is in the field of recording the overall scene or selective portions thereof in armored gunnery training exercises in which the recorded battle scenes may be played back and used in the training of tank operations troops.
2. Prior Art
The gunner in a U.S. Army battle tank is equipped with an infrared (IR) gun sight for night firing operations. In a training exercise tank battle scene during periods of bad weather or total darkness the gunner can still see the battle scene. However, under these same conditions the range officer and safety office who need to monitor the entire battle scene do not have the capability to monitor the overall situation and cannot see what actually is happening in the training exercise. These bad weather and total darkness conditions usually call for discontinuing the training exercises to avoid serious accidents with possible fatalities. In the past there has been no satisfactory inclement weather or night time system to record those exercises and thus to discuss errors with gunners, tank drivers, tank commanders or new students after the gunnery exercises are completed.
Some systems have used vidicon cameras looking into the eyepiece of image intensifiers but the system had limited night time capability and no total darkness capability. Time and date reference information have been available but only with cumbersome electronic equipment. Some of this equipment was delicate in operations; especially where cloud cover was immediately followed by bright sunshine. Often high voltage and large power consumption was needed to operate these systems.
The present monitoring and recording system provides a simple, inexpensive yet workable novel system for recording gunnery training exercises, along with providing additional data on the recorded medium, under inclement weather, dusty or night time conditions.